Xylitol is a white crystalline, amorphous sugar alcohol and low-calorie sweetener. Xylitol prevents demineralization of teeth and bones, otitis media infection, respiratory tract infections, inflammation and cancer progression. NADPH generated in xylitol metabolism aid in the treatment of glucose-6-phosphate deficiency-associated hemolytic anemia. Moreover, it has a negligible effect on blood glucose and plasma insulin levels due to its unique metabolism. Its diverse applications in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food and polymer industries fueled its market growth and made it one of the top 12 bio-products. Recently, xylitol has also been used as a drug carrier due to its high permeability and non-toxic nature. However, it become a challenge to fulfil the rapidly increasing market demand of xylitol. Xylitol is present in fruit and vegetables, but at very low concentrations, which is not adequate to satisfy the consumer demand. With the passage of time, other methods including chemical catalysis, microbial and enzymatic biotransformation, have also been developed for its large-scale production. Nevertheless, large scale production still suffers from high cost of production. In this review, we summarize some alternative approaches and recent advancements that significantly improve the yield and lower the cost of production.

Polycyclic tetramate macrolactams (PTMs) are a growing class of natural products and are derived from a hybrid polyketide synthase (PKS)/non-ribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) pathway. PTM biosynthetic gene clusters are conserved and widely distributed in bacteria, however, most of them remain silent. Herein we report the activation of a PTM gene cluster in marine-derived Streptomyces pactum SCSIO 02999 by promoter engineering and heterologous expression, leading to the discovery of six new PTMs, pactamides A–F (11–16), with potent cytotoxic activity upon several human cancer cell lines. In vivo gene disruption experiments and in vitro biochemical assays reveal a reductive cyclization cascade for polycycle formation, with reactions sequentially generating the 5, 5/5 and 5/5/6 carbocyclic ring systems, catalysed by the phytoene dehydrogenase PtmB2, the oxidoreductase PtmB1, and the alcohol dehydrogenase PtmC, respectively. Furthermore, PtmC was demonstrated as a bifunctional cyclase for catalyzing the formation of the inner five-membered ring in ikarugamycin. This study suggests the possibility of finding more bioactive PTMs by genome mining and discloses a general mechanism for the formation of 5/5/6-type carbocyclic rings in PTMs.

Polycyclic tetramate macrolactams (PTMs), a widely distributed class of structurally complex natural products exhibiting diverse biological activities, share a tetramate-containing macrocyclic lactam ring fused to a subset of carbocyclic rings. More than 30 naturally occurring PTM members have been reported. Representative members include ikarugamycin, HSAF, and alteramides. The emerging significance of PTMs in medicinal applications has raised attentions on their biosynthetic studies. These studies have unveiled the unexpected conservation of compact PTM biosynthetic loci in phylogenetically diverse bacteria and elucidated mechanisms for key steps in PTM biosynthesis. PTMs were demonstrated to be derived from the common origin of a hybrid polyketide synthase (PKS)/nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) pathway, in which the PKS portion was iteratively used to generate two separate polyketide chains. A common tetramate-containing polyene intermediate was proposed to be the final product of all PTM PKS/NRPS assembly lines. Subsequently, a set of oxidoreductases acted in a not yet clearly understood way to dictate the manner of cyclizations to yield different polycycle ring systems in PTMs. The only well studied example was the formation of the inner five-membered ring in ikarugamycin, which was catalyzed by an alcohol dehydrogenase via a [1 + 6] Michael addition. Nonetheless, these studies have illustrated the extraordinary simplicity of nature’s art in the biosynthesis of PTMs with complex structures and paved the way to further expand the structural diversity of the family of medicinally relevant PTMs by genome mining and combinatorial biosynthesis.

Microbial silver nanoparticles have been known to have bactericidal effects but the antimicrobial mechanism has not been clearly revealed. The use of microorganisms in the synthesis of nanoparticles emerges as an ecofriendly and exciting approach. Here we report on the extracellular synthesis method for the preparation of silver nanoparticles in water using the extract of Agaricus bisporus, a naturally occurring edible mushroom, as reducing and protecting agents. The silver nanoparticles were characterised by ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-Ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The synthesised silver nanoparticles showed antibacterial activity against the multi-drug resistant Gram positive and Gram negative bacterial pathogens.